Die Tryin'

by Stavro Yianni

  *****

  When Nick XR2 heard Tony shout ‘Oi!’ somewhere in the near distance, he immediately opened the car door and got out, scanning the street ahead of him like a paranoid lion scouting its territory for scavengers. He caught a glimpse of Nick Black disappearing into a car before it sped away into the distance, Tony throwing a desperate, futile punch in its direction.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Charlie asked edgily from the back seat, trying his best to see what was happening through the windscreen.

  ‘It’s Nick Mavro,’ Nick XR2 replied, just as Tony stopped still and started shouting after Nick Black and Carla.

  Nick put two fingers into his mouth and whistled loudly, making Tony spin round to face him; his eyes were wild with anger. When he saw Nick by his car, he pointed after the one that got away.

  Nick didn’t hang around.

  He got back in his car, grabbed the GPS unit, and started up the engine. He pulled out and zipped over to where Tony was standing.

  Tony opened the door and jumped in shotgun. ‘It was them!’ he said as he got in.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Nick said. ‘They can’t get away.’ He checked the GPS to see that they were making a good fist of it though. ‘They’re going pretty damn fast,’ he stated.

  ‘Well, what are we fucking waiting for?’ Tony snapped, a vigorous, deadly energy having consumed him, probably half from booze and half from the adrenaline of the chase.

  Nick went to catch the bite. He missed it and the car stalled. ‘Shit!’ he spat.

  ‘They’ll get away at this rate!’ Charlie said from the back, his eyes darting left and right like Pinball balls.

  ‘Come on! Let’s fucking get ’em!’ Tony shouted, bouncing in his seat like an excited baby. He smelt blood like a bloodhound wounding a fox, its vital fluids spraying in the air. He wanted to be unleashed to finish the kill. ‘COME ON, RE!’ he shouted.

  Nick took a deep breath tried again. This time he caught the bite perfectly. He moved swiftly through the gears. Tony began nodding his head feverishly, at the same time panting like a rabid dog, and for a second, both Charlie and Nick felt uneasy in his presence. He was wild, out of control.

  Nick slipped through the gears regardless, rounding corners, following the red dot on his GPS, which was moving at a rate he didn’t expect. ‘She’s fucking good!’ he said as he diverted his stare from the road to the GPS, turning left and right, mimicking Carla’s movements.

  ‘Yeah, but you’re better, re,’ Tony stated, watching the road ahead, a sick grin etched onto his face. ‘Now, go get ’em!’

  Nick put his foot down, and checked the GPS. He didn’t seem to be gaining at all.

  ‘How far behind are we?’ Tony asked.

  Nick puffed his cheeks. ‘A couple of minutes…’ he said.

  ‘Look out!’ Charlie abruptly shouted from the back. He had been watching through the windscreen while Nick’s attention was diverted by the GPS, causing him to veer off into the wrong lane. A car was heading towards them in the opposite direction. Charlie’s shout made Nick’s head flick upwards. He saw the oncoming car at the last second. He instinctively swung the wheel round. His car skidded over to the right lane, dodging the other car by inches. Its horn rang in their ears as Nick regained control and sped away from it.

  ‘Whooooo!’ Tony shouted and began laughing. ‘Nice driving, re!’

  Nick puffed his cheeks in relief and glanced again at the GPS. Suddenly, he seemed to have gained a lot of distance. He looked up at the road again, and then when he checked the GPS the next time, he saw he had gained more. A lot more.

  He stared at it in confusion for a second or two before he realised what had happened. ‘They’ve stopped!’ he stated.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘Yeah. They’re not moving any more! They’re up ahead. Next right.’

  ‘Well, let’s go get ’em!’ Tony said, and began rubbing his hands in excitement.

  Nick slowed down— pursuit speed no longer necessary—his heart slowing along with his engine. Adrenaline had filled his veins, even though the others would be adamant that he had maintained his coolness, his exterior had betrayed his underlying truth.

  His breathing became steady once more, but his heart beat hard. He took the next right and glanced at the GPS. ‘They’re on this road,’ he said, and scanned the area ahead with wide, anxious eyes. Tony was looking around him like a kid at the safari park checking for monkeys. Charlie was wringing his hands and muttering something to himself.

  Nick XR2 moved further down the street, Nick Black’s red dot on his GPS now merging with his own representative dot.

  ‘What the fuck…’ Tony said in a voice full of dread.

  Nick’s eyes focused in on what Tony was staring at.

  ‘What is it?’ Charlie asked nervously from the back.

  ‘Pull over,’ Tony said, and Nick did just that, a numb feeling suffusing him.

  Carla’s car was just ahead of them. Perfectly still. Thousands of tiny pieces of glass surrounded her front tyres like confetti; thin tendrils of smoke rose from her engine, which sat beneath a bonnet that had crumpled like a played accordion once she smashed into the telephone pole.

  ‘That’s why they stopped,’ Tony noted, and glanced grimly at Nick.

  They quickly got out of Nick’s car, and just dumbly stood and stared for a few seconds.

  ‘What the fuck happened?’ asked Charlie, his head twitching.

  Tony didn’t say a word. Instead, he approached the car cautiously, as if he were approaching a bomb, his wide, drunk eyes surveying the scene. He went over to the driver’s side and looked in to see Carla slumped over the steering wheel. She’d hit it with such force, her neck had snapped like a twig. Her head was twisted round at an unnatural, ninety-five degree angle.

  Airbags! Airbags! Tony’s mind started shouting angrily. This is why cars have airbags now!

  A loud groan made him look up. He scanned the area ahead from where it came. Nick Black was on the pavement about five feet away, writhing like a worm. Tony looked from Nick to the windscreen, tracing his path of trajectory.

  Seatbelts! Seatbelts! his mind shouted, continuing on its angry car safety tirade. That’s why we wear fucking seatbelts!

  He walked calmly over to where Nick Black lay, noticing the holdall was still firmly in his grip. He squatted down beside him, grabbed his shuddering shoulders, and rolled him over onto his back. When he laid eyes on the smudge that was now Nick’s face, he winced and looked away. The whole right side was a red smear, a long lick of skin hanging off his chin like torn wallpaper, dirt embedded in the oozy flesh beneath like a piece of chicken dipped in breadcrumb. His ear on that side of his head had been scraped clean off, and when Tony looked to his right, he could see lumps of gnarly cartilage half submerged in a streak of blood—he knew straight away that they used to be Nick’s ear. He looked back and now noticed the blood streaming out of Nick’s other ear, and Tony realised he must have taken a massive blow to the head.

  Nick Black glared up at Tony with eyes brimming with fear and excruciating pain. ‘C-C-Carla…’ he managed to say, blood spilling out from between his teeth, and down his chin.

  He then abruptly reached out and grabbed Tony’s overalls with a cold, raw hand. Tony looked down at that hand, and then met Nick’s stare.

  ‘Carla!’ Nick repeated, a spurt of blood flying from his mouth.

  Tony took in a deep breath, glanced back at the car, then looked back at Nick. ‘She’s okay,’ he said aloud, and nodded positively, adding a false smile for effect.

  ‘H-H-Help her. Tone,’ Nick managed, and nodded his head. ‘Help her!’

  Tony nodded his head. ‘I will.’

  Nick then tightened his grip on Tony’s overalls. ‘Tony…’ he blurted, releasing more blood from his mouth. Tony looked back at him, wishing this would just end, hating watching this, hating himself, hating everything. ‘I’m…sorry…’ Nick strained, and Tony looked down solemn
ly. ‘I’m…sorry…’ he repeated before closing his eyes, his breathing suddenly becoming desperate as his lungs and sinus filled rapidly with blood. He then began choking, and at that moment, Tony involuntarily dropped him as if he were holding a diseased rat, and looked away, his balled fist shooting up to his mouth. He bit down on it hard, Nick’s choking sounds swarming his ears and mind like bees in their hive, and he knew at that point he would never be able to erase those sounds from his mind. No matter how hard he tried, it would never be clean of them for the rest of his days.

  They would never give him a peaceful night’s sleep.

  Eventually, thankfully, they soon subsided. Tony closed his eyes, pulled his stavro out from beneath his top, and kissed it. When he looked back, Nick Black was perfectly still. At peace.

  Something on the ground then caught Tony’s eye. He bent down and picked it up. In his hand was a postcard of a beach, a happy couple strolling across the sand, the sun beating down on them. The words SMILE JAMAICA danced and jigged across the top. Tony looked from it to Nick Black’s prone, battered body, and let out a regrettable sigh. Poor bastard was a million miles away from this shit, he thought to himself with bitterness in his heart. He went to Nick XR2, who stood over Nick Black, staring down at him with watery eyes. Tony handed him the postcard. Nick XR2 took it, and glanced at it.

  He went to say something to Tony when Charlie’s voice stopped him. ‘You two better come and look at this,’ he said.

  He was standing by the passenger side of the car, staring down at it with bug eyes. Tony and Nick XR2 glanced at each other before they went over to where Charlie stood. Charlie’s eyes never diverted from where he was staring. Instead, he just pointed downwards. They followed his finger to the passenger door. A message had been scratched into the window and paintwork below in long, scrawny letters.

  HEAR NO EVIL

  All three of them just stood and stared, dumbstruck.

  ‘You know what that means, don’t you?’ Charlie asked, and then looked up at them both. ‘I told you he was back…’

  Tony stared at it, all the while anger and demonic rage building inside him to a crescendo. He sharply spun round, looking for the person (ghost?) that wrote the message. The surrounding was more terraced housing, but his eyes locked onto an alleyway over to their right; it was the only way anyone could have left the scene without them seeing. He immediately raced over and stared down it. It was empty. But it curved round in the distance, obscuring the exit.

  He went to go down there when Nick XR2 stopped him in his tracks. ‘Tony!’ he shouted.

  Tony spun round to meet Nick’s stare, who was looking over at the others, the locals, the passersby, who were starting to become attracted to the scene.

  ‘We better get out of here,’ Charlie suggested.

  ‘Grab the bling and let’s go!’ Nick ordered, heading back towards his car with Charlie.

  Tony darted over to Nick Black’s side. A sudden compulsion to hug his friend overcame him, even though he hadn’t (and most probably couldn’t) forgiven him for going behind their backs.

  ‘Tony, come on!’ Nick shouted and Tony stirred back into life.

  He grabbed the holdall, having to prize it from Nick’s dead grip, who still didn’t want to let it go even from the afterlife. Tony yanked it with a grunt, and it finally came free. He got to his feet and walked backwards at a fast pace, unable to take his eyes away from the scene of devastation. He glanced round to his left, to see a woman approaching fast.

  ‘Shall I call an ambulance?’ she asked anxiously.

  Tony shook his head in response. ‘It’s too late,’ he said. ‘They’re dead.’

  He then spun round and raced for Nick’s XR2, jumping in shotgun, Nick hitting the accelerator before Tony could even close the door. Nick shifted out of the area as fast as he could, checking his rear view every second until he felt they were safely out of danger. Tony sat with the holdall on his lap like it was his pet dog. Charlie was in the back, a grave expression on his face, shaking his head and mumbling something to himself.

  ‘All right, listen,’ Nick said once they were well away from the scene. ‘When his mum and sisters find out what happened, you act like it’s the first you heard of it. Okay?’

  Silence responded.

  ‘I SAID: OKAY?’ Nick snapped, hitting his steering wheel with his palm.

  ‘Okay, okay…’ Charlie answered in a fed up manner.

  ‘We don’t know why he was up here,’ Nick continued. ‘And we don’t know what happened to him. It was a car accident and that’s that.’

  ‘But, it wasn’t an accident was it, Nick?’ Tony then said solemnly, making Nick’s head spin round in his direction.

  ‘Wh-what?’ he asked, frowning.

  Tony turned his head creepily slow to face him like he was a waxwork that had come to life. ‘You saw what was written on the side of the car,’ he said in an emotionless voice, an equally emotionless expression planted on his face. ‘You know what it means.’

  ‘All I saw was a car accident, Tone,’ Nick replied sternly. ‘Anyone at any time could’ve written that on her car.’

  Tony turned his head back the way it came and stared out of the windscreen again. Charlie just sat back and shook his head at what he perceived to be Nick’s pig ignorance.

  Nick just gave him daggers in the rear view. ‘The main priority is to cover our arses about Nick and Carla,’ he said, feeling he needed to remind them.

  ‘Like we did Taki? And Marco?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘Yes!’ Nick replied. ‘Just like them. That’s the price we’re paying. Okay?’

  ‘Whatever,’ Charlie replied tetchily, and looked out of the window, his arms crossed tight over his chest.

  Tony just remained staring out of the window like he was severely stoned, the bag of bling he had just ripped from a dead man’s hands on his lap, his own hands resting lightly upon it.

  Nick put his foot down, hard. Soon, they were back on the motorways and heading home.

  They hardly spoke another word to each other all the way back to London.

  FIFTEEN

  Thanks to a combination of clear roads and Nick XR2’s ability to drive at 90 mph as competently as Joe Average drives at 30, they reached London in no time.

  They went straight to Nick XR2’s to be greeted by Snoop, furiously wagging his tail.

  ‘Just give me my cut and I’ll take it from there,’ Tony said to Nick as they entered his house.

  ‘Listen to me, Tone,’ Nick began. ‘I know you’re freaked out by what’s been happening, but trust me, I think it’s better for us if we hold onto ’em just a bit longer…’

  ‘No. I’ve waited around long enough. Today is the last straw,’ Tony replied adamantly. ‘So, gimme my cut. You two can do what you want with the rest.’

  ‘Every man for himself now is it?’ Charlie asked dryly.

  ‘You fucking bet!’ Tony replied. Charlie just rolled his eyes. ‘I don’t trust anyone any more, including me,’ Tony stated. ‘Nah, I’m past all the oath and brothers skata. We have to end this, Charlie.’

  ‘I agree with you there, Tone,’ Charlie replied, a stern expression on his face.

  ‘And what are you gonna do about the marks?’ Nick asked. ‘How are you gonna shift ’em without it rebounding on us?’

  ‘Listen, re,’ Tony said. ‘I don’t give a fuck if we get caught any more. I’m gone. I’m out. Understand? It’s over. Now give me my cut!’

  Nick sighed, and rubbed his head. ‘Nothing’s gonna change your mind is it?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Tony swiftly replied.

  Nick began nodding. ‘Come in here,’ he then said, leading them into his front room. He then turned to face them both. ‘Look. I’ve got an idea,’ he informed them. ‘I’ve been looking into it a lot recently. It’s like this: the credit crunch has sent the value of currency tumbling, and the price of gold soaring. Now, that not only helps us in terms of our return, it also means that a whole load
of websites have popped up. Websites for companies that buy your gold and melt it. Hear that, Tone? They melt it down into liquid and make bullion bars out of it. Now, if they do that to our stash, the marks will vanish into thin air.’

  ‘Websites?’ Tony echoed. ‘Can we trust ’em?’

  ‘I don’t know, Tone,’ Nick replied. ‘There’s only one way to find out. Now, the price of gold is going up as we speak, and it doesn’t look like going down any time soon. The more we wait, the more we make. So, my advice would be to hold onto ’em for as long as possible.’

  Tony tutted and shook his head. ‘I don’t care about all that shit, man,’ he said, flipping his hand on the air. ‘What I get now, I get. And I don’t care if I get banged up any more, believe me. I’m taking the risk.’

  ‘You’re adamant?’ Nick asked.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Nick sighed and then began nodding. ‘Okay,’ he conceded.

  Nick stared at Tony stone-faced as he took a seat on the sofa, opened up the holdall, and spilt its contents all over the coffee table just like he did when they first got their hands on them. Nick then went and fetched a set of scales from the kitchen, and began weighing up anything that contained gold, which was most of the stash.

  ‘We’ll have to let ’em know that it’s a no questions asked deal,’ Nick stated while he slung top grade gold into the scales as if he were weighing penny sweets. ‘And with the amount of bling we’re gonna hand over, I can’t see ’em turning it down.’

  He poured the weighed jewels into a small cotton money bag—the type he usually used to carry baggies of pound coins and loose change to the bank—and handed it to Tony, who took it and looked inside.

  ‘That’s one third, Tone,’ Nick said. ‘You just watched me weight it.’

  ‘I know that!’ Tony replied hotly. ‘Now do Charlie’s.’

  Charlie frowned and began waving his hands on the air as if he was about to be handed him a live grenade. ‘Nah, nah,’ he said. ‘I don’t want ’em. They’re cursed.’